


brave little soldier boy

by tunasimp (witty_kitty)



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Dolores and Five don’t really have a relationship in this sorry :(, Gen, Hurt, Number Five | The Boy-centric, The Handler is a bit of a creep, Time Fuckery, Young Number Five | The Boy, but also not really?, except for like one specific part, some s3 speculation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 09:34:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28526292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/witty_kitty/pseuds/tunasimp
Summary: A thirteen year old, even one as smart and resourceful as Five, can’t survive long in a world on fire.(Or, an AU where Five lies about his age and suffers for it.)
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy) & Everyone
Comments: 11
Kudos: 139





	brave little soldier boy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cleaning up some older drafts and posting them. sorry if it ain’t up to snuff, I just want to clear out my writing folder

“I guess this is it,” Five says to the mannequin he has propped up by Diego’s grave. He used up the last of his painkillers and antibiotics already. If he’s going to die, he might as well make it as painless as possible. It’s working — he can’t feel his broken leg at all. Though, that could always be necrosis. Five hasn’t looked at the break wound in days, instead wrapping up the gory mess of splintered bone and muscle in his cleanest cloths and hoping for the best.

It’s not like there’s anything else he can do.  
He ran out of food and water a few days ago, and Five knows there’s none around that he can loot. Not that he’s even able to. “This is the end.”

He is going to die.

“At least it’s starvation. I always figured it was one of the nicer ways to go.” He had read up on it when he was ten. They all used to talk about it, the way they might die. Diego had boasted about having a ‘cool’ death, saving the world and having a statue erected because of his heroic sacrifice. Luther had immediately snapped back at him, and the argument quickly devolved into a fight. Number One’s rare display of anger was born of worry; he didn’t want any of them to die. Five agreed, though he never said it. (He should have said it.)

Allison wanted to die of old age. _I want to live my life to fullest_ , she’d say, flipping through a teen magazine. _I’ve got so much to do_. Ben wanted to die of old age too. Sometimes, Five would hear the two of them would whisper about how their lives away from the academy would be like in Ben’s room. _I think I’ll get a dog,_ Ben would laugh quietly to himself. _It’ll be a big fluffy one, and I’ll take him for walks in the woods behind_ my _house when I’m an adult._

(Ben never reaches adulthood. He never even leaves the academy.)

Klaus had always laughed it off. Everyone figured he would overdose, and that would be that. Five had only heard what his real thoughts were once, when his brother has been drunk out of his mind after raiding their father’s liquor cabinet. _I want to die with someone_ , he had hiccuped. _But no one will ever love me that much_. Five hadn’t payed attention then, brushing it off as Klaus being dramatic. He should have payed attention. He should have reassured his brother. He should have done so much more.

(And sweet, mousy little Vanya—

Vanya whispered it to him in the dead of night. _I don’t want to die alone,_ she had cried softly. _All of you always go out together on missions, and I’m— I want to be there too. Even if something goes wrong. I don’t want to be left out._

Five never found her body in the ruins of the academy. He supposes she died alone in the end after all, left behind in her cold apartment with peeling walls, playing her violin as the world burned.)

Another throb shoots through his leg. His stomach growls.

Five can do nothing but wait.

Waiting has never been his strong suit. He doesn’t know the meaning of patience, always too eager for results. Always too eager to time travel. Always too eager to find food, to find water, to find a way out. A way back.

Look at where his impatience got him: dying slowly from a rotting leg in a rotting world on the graves that house the rotting corpses of his siblings, with only half a mannequin for company.

“I have so many small regrets, Dolly,” Five doesn’t talk to her often. She’s a mannequin, not a real person, but... Five’s tired and upset, and he really can’t bring himself to care right now. “There’s so much— so much I should have done. I should’ve—“ _Taken Vanya to Griddy’s more often. Talked to Two about his favorite recipes. Listened to Luther ramble about astronomy and constellations. Taken Ben to a pet store. Dressed up for Klaus and Allison’s fashion show_. “I should’ve told them I loved them.”

His eyes burn, but he’s too dehydrated for tears. The silence stretches like hours between them. Closing his eyes, he leans further into Dolly, her presence his only comfort in the face of his agonizingly slow death.

“Oh, am I interrupting something?” Five nearly shrieks at the sudden sound, fighting back the urge to blink away. He scrambles back, knocking Dolly over in the process. (For a split second, he’s convinced the voice is from her, and that’s he’s finally gone insane.) He spins around as fast as he can on a broken leg, and comes face to face with a well-dressed blonde woman. “Hello! You must be Number Five.”

What the hell?

Five instinctively tries to shift back as she approaches, but his back quickly hits the brick tombs. “I’m not going to hurt you, silly!” She laughs, placing her briefcase to the side and squatting down before him. Something in her expression reminds him of one, though he can’t place who. “I’m the Handler. I’m here to save your life.”

“...what?”

“If you don’t get medical attention right now, you’re going to die.” She lets out a little giggle, as if there’s some joke to him dying. Maybe there is. Five wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out his life was some big cosmic punchline. “It’d be such a waste of great potential. Fortunately for you, I work for an organization that can help you help us. I see great things in you, Five.”

“I... I don’t understand.” He really doesn’t, and he hates himself for it. “Why couldn’t you come for me earlier? Why couldn’t you—“ _save my family_ “—stop the end of everything?”

“Not the end of everything,” She corrects. “Just the end of something. This was all meant to happen. I’d love to explain, but...” The woman shoots a meaningful look at his broken leg. “Now, are you coming with me, Number Five?” She extends her hand expectantly. Five wants to scream at her — _why can’t you save them? what do you mean this was supposed to happen? who are you?_ — but he stops. Schools his expression and takes The Handler in for a moment.

Her smile borders on predatory, blood red lips framing bone white teeth, and Five realizes _why_ she looks so familiar. It’s the look in her eyes — Five used to see it everyday at the dinner table before jumping into the apocalypse. She’s cut from the same cloth as Reginald Hargreeves, and though he’s a bit out of practice, Five hasn’t forgotten how this song and dance goes.

There’s only ever one answer.

Five takes her hand.

* * *

The organization is called The Commission. The Handler tells him that they fix the timeline, when free will ‘messes things up a bit too much’.

“We’re all just apart of the machine working to keep the timeline together, Five,” She smiles, walking ahead on long legs and forcing him to walk faster in order to keep up. “You’ll be one of the many agents that help keep this machine of ours running.”

Agent.

Five realizes very quickly that it’s just a nicer way of saying murderer.

They use briefcases to get around the timeline, and Five considers stealing one from someone. Going home. Seeing his siblings young and happy and alive.

But all briefcase activity is monitored, and Five is not stupid. He’ll be found out in seconds and tossed back into the apocalypse. He can’t go back. He can’t.

“In exchange for saving your life and rehabilitating you, you’re going to work for us for five years,” The Handler slides a cream folder towards him. “At the end of five years, we can drop you wherever you’d like in the timeline... though in your case it’ll have to be any year before the 1900s. Sorry, Five,” she smiles, false sympathy tugging on her lips. “We can’t risk anything. You know how it is.”

“...Of course.” Five years is more than enough time to figure out a way to stop the apocalypse.

Five’s life goes back to a schedule — complete a case, return to headquarters, receive a new case, eat, sleep, and repeat. He hates it, but the familiarity of it all is comforting. The Handler keeps him on a short leash, but it eases up as he remains docile and obedient.

(What the Handler doesn’t realize is that there are other forms of rebellion. Five’s treason fills up the margins of Vanya’s book.)

Time passes.

It doesn’t take long for him to notice, however, that it’s not really passing for him. It’s not really passing for _anyone._

Five storms into her office, and she’s sitting there, legs crossed and staring expectantly, like she knew this would happen. “What the fuck did you do to me?” He snaps, slamming his hands down onto the table. “Why do I still look thirteen?”

“Oh Five,” The Handler laughs, high-pitched and grating. Five resists the urge to wrap his hands around her throat and _squeeze._ “We haven’t done anything! Time simply runs differently here! It’s hasn’t stopped completely — that little trick is hard to pull off at this scale — but it’s definitely slower here. A lot of us would be six feet under otherwise!”

“How slow? My contract stated _five years.”_

“Always straight to the point. Ten years here is equal to one year out there.” That’s fifty years. He’s stuck working at this damned place for _fifty years._ Noticing his expression, The Handler tuts, reaching over and dragging her claws down the side of his jaw. “Oh, Five. Don’t worry. Your mind will stay sharp as a tack! Think of it as one long year, rather than ten regular years. I’d hate to be in your place, though — puberty is going to be _awful.”_ She lets out another grating laugh, shooing him out with a wave of her hand. “Of course, if you’re upset, we could always drop you off where you came—“

Five slams the door on his way out.

When he gets back to his Commission-sanctioned quarters, Five grabs his shitty Commission-sanctioned pillow and screams into it for a while.

He only stops when he hears a voice — one that reminds him of Dolly, who’s still all alone in the apocalypse — yelling at him to get his shit together. To open Vanya’s book and get to work. _Don’t forget to carry the one, it tells him. You didn’t do it on page 156._

_Don’t act like the child they see you as._

( _Don’t act like the child that you_ are.)

He listens to the voice, but doesn’t allow anything more. Can’t allow anything more. As much as Five wants to cling onto the only companion he has, if anyone found out—

Five is the the best assassin in the Commission, yes, but he is also currently the _youngest_ assassin, physically and mentally, in the Commission. When people look at him, all they see is a child playing pretend among grown ups, a nuisance to be pushed aside and ignored, another hurdle to cross in the corporate ladder, as if Five didn’t have his insides hollowed out and stuffed full of barbs to make him just as monstrous as the rest of them.

He knows what they’d say, seeing a fourteen year old boy — over twenty years old technically — talk to himself.

Years pass.

Five continues to grow— slowly.

He doesn’t have a partner anymore. He drove all of them off the minute they looked at him with their condescending eyes and patronizing voices.

He may not look it, but Five is an adult now, at least in regular time.

(In Commission Time, he is nothing but a scared teenager who wakes up with screams at the tip of his tongue.)

He’s perfectly capable of taking care of himself and getting the job done. He’s also perfectly capable of getting himself home. Years of his work line the margins of Vanya’s book, and he’s so, so close to a breakthrough.

He’s so close to getting out, and he’s not the only one who knows that.

The Handler pulls him aside before he can go for his next target. “Heard you were assassinating the president, Five,” She smiles at his, tucking a curl behind her ear. “The nerves must be making you famished. Let’s have lunch in my office.”

“I’m not hungry,” Five says flatly and tries to move past her. She catches him by the shoulder.

“Believe me, you’re going to want to. I don’t think you’ll have time for anything in the sixties, and there’s certainly going to be no time during your surgery!”

He stops. “My _what.”_

The Handler smiles, all teeth. “The higher-ups wanted to try out an... enhancement that we believe will make our agents much more efficient. They had a drawing, and guess who’s name came out of it? Yours!”

“You already messed with my DNA,” Five hisses, blood roaring in his ears. “What the hell is this surgery going to do?”

“Oh, you’re so cute when you worry, Five,” The Handler traces one red nail down the side of his face, the sharp tip digging in and leaving a white trail. “It’s a surprise! If anything, think of it as an early birthday present. You’ll be eighteen soon, after all,” She smiles. “Almost an adult. It’s such a special occasion.” With that, The Handler passes him by, her heels clicking the seconds down to his doom.

She has his hands tied.

Five makes a decision, and leaps from 1963 to 2019, and comes face to face with his siblings... in a very familiar pre-pubescent body.

(These soft little hands don’t have the callouses or the burns he’s accumulated over the years, his leg does not ache, his face is plush with baby fat, but worst of all—

Worst of all, he knows that everyone looking at him sees a lost, angry little kid playing pretend again.)

Five does not tell any of them about the apocalypse. He sure as hell doesn’t tell them about the Commission. He tells them it’s been forty-five years (and it has been forty-five years) because he’s sure as hell not going to put them in danger by telling them the truth. But as he trudges up the stairs, sandwich in hand, the scared child in him cries for his family, cries desperately for a hug.

There’s no time for any of it. He squashes it down.

He can’t involve them. He can’t — he has to keep them out of his crap, keep them alive.

He wasn’t going to tell Vanya either, but—

( _”I don’t want to be left out.”_ Her terrified, teary eyes. His little thirteen-year-old sister, dying alone in a burning world.)

Five visits her apartment that night. She patches him up, just like she used to, and for a few seconds, Five can believe that everything will be okay.

Vanya will believe him about the apocalypse. She never stopped believing he’d come home, after all.

So he tells her. Not about the Commission, but he tells her about those few horrible months.

Vanya does not believe him.

(His last hope looks at him with dull eyes marred with disbelief and confusion, but worst of all... there’s pity.

She sees a child, just like the rest of them.

Five is a sentimental fool to think that she would be any different.)

So be it.

Five will simply have to stop an apocalypse by himself.

He works better alone anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter: non-local teenager tries to stop the apocalypse in the sixties whilst also trying not to have a mental breakdown from stress
> 
> Still debating whether or not I should let there be comfort in this story. Should Five get the hug? Or should I think like the TUA writers and take it out?


End file.
